


the moon or the branches

by heartslogos



Category: Gideon the Ninth
Genre: F/F, Speculation, Spoilers, Temporary Character Death, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-11-02 10:36:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20717048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/pseuds/heartslogos
Summary: nothing should separate people/but the sun or the night, the  moon or the branches- Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XLII-Thus far they have been unable to procure her cavalier’s body.No matter.Harrow can make one. She is a Lyctor. She has passed several of the trials that would have led her to becoming one. She has a faint idea of what the others would entail.





	the moon or the branches

Thus far they have been unable to procure her cavalier’s body.

No matter.

Harrow can make one. She is a Lyctor. She has passed several of the trials that would have led her to becoming one. She has a faint idea of what the others would entail.

She can grow armies out of a handful of scaphoids and capitates.

Harrow can make a Gideon Nav. She might not be able to create a beguiling corpse as the Seventh can, nor does she think she would want to, but she can create a skeleton. And she can figure out a way to conjure the soul of Gideon Nav and bind it to that skeleton.

Gideon Nav is somewhere inside of her and there is no reason why Harrow cannot conceive of a way to get her _out_.

The Necrolord Prime thinks it would kill them both to do so.

What the most revered does not know is that Harrow was never meant to be born to start with, and Gideon Nav was not meant to live. Gideon Nav does not get killed by the things that should kill her.

Apparently, Gideon Nav can only be killed by Gideon Nav and _Harrow never permitted it of her_, therefore Gideon Nav does _not_ get into the obscure annals of Ninth census records to become dust. Gideon Nav gets to come back as a skeleton that Harrow will make perfectly for her and gets to explain all the reasons why she thought it was a good idea to attempt to die against Harrow’s explicit commands, and she gets to listen to Harrow explain to her exactly why all of her self-sacrificing heroic lunacy is exactly that.

Harrow has lived her entire life with Gideon Nav. She can build Griddle’s bones by heart without looking. It would be easier than making a key.

-

There is no reason why Harrow cannot do this. If Septimus’ house could do it, then surely Harrow can. Harrow is capable of doing things the Seventh House would weep to do. And Harrow isn’t even attempting to preserve flesh. She’s only working with the bone. The bone is strictly _her_ forte.

And if _Silas Octakiseron_ could manage to call his cavalier back when he had the ambition of a snail and the capability to think beyond the tip of his nose then Harrow can dredge up Gideon Nav — the loudest, most obvious, brazen, and obnoxious pain in Harrow’s side — and make her say something suitably mind numbingly idiotic through the form of an undying bone servant.

Gideon might not have lips nor lungs to speak with, but the dead have other ways of speaking and Gideon’s already had practice pretending to have a vow of silence. A fake vow that, despite all odds, Harrow has to admit Gideon stuck surprisingly well to.

Obtaining the bones is not difficult. Traveling in the retinue of the Necrolord himself on the way to what Harrow presumes to be an elite area filled with all the resources one in training to be the Necrolord’s hand and member of his direct following, suitable of one with the title _the First_, means that the procurement of supplies for her to work with should not be hard.

The hard part is finding a place to be left alone.

The Necrolord’s ship is not the kind of loud chatter of the Canaan House, despite there being more people with flesh than not, but it is still a bustling hub compared to the Ninth’s sacred misery.

Thus far Harrow has only ran into Tridentarius once, by accident, and the two of them departed that meeting with the strong and mutual desire not to have any repeats.

Harrow needs to be alone. She needs to be alone with space to work, without others to peer over her shoulder or gawp or question or — or what have you.

She is also faced with the surprising problem of having _too many_ choices in regards to material. Harrow is used to working with whatever happens to be available.

Now she has an entire breadth of bone available. Bones from the young, bones from the old, bones of someone who was six foot four, bones of someone who was a runner, bones of someone who was a priest, bones of someone who spent their life in plate armor — a plethora and variety of bones with which she can work with. Each one of them with their unique characteristics borne of whatever life the body they shuffled through the mortal coil decided to lead.

Some bones are so new that Harrow can imagine sucking the marrow out of them. Some are so old that they look like one faint jostle will send them scattering into the ship’s ventilation, lost forever.

Obviously, Harrow declines to use those. Despite how entertaining it would be to stick Griddle in something ancient, probably revered, and most likely deeply important.

Harrow pushes her sleeves up and gets to work. It is unlikely that Griddle will be in this skeleton for very long. Chances are that her cavalier will break something within the first few days. Probably on purpose.

That is fine. Harrow plans on this being a work in progress. She can add and subtract from it as time goes on. And with the many tricks and secrets Lyctor-dom has ahead of her, she is sure that there will be many, many additions she will be providing her cavalier’s vessel.

But right now she needs a good, stolid base.

-

Harrow is furious.

She has the bones. She has the theory. She has the power.

What she does _not_ have is Gideon Nav piloting a perfectly well assembled skeleton at her side, where she ought to be.

Gideon hasn’t spoken to her since she woke up that first day, since the battle at Canaan house that killed her. And truthfully, Harrow isn’t sure — well.

She isn’t sure that her mind didn’t imagine he entire thing. It could have been a hallucination borne of grief and pain, as said possible hallucination said. It could also have been Gideon being a dick and playing it off.

If it was the latter then where is Gideon _now?_

Harrow closes her eyes, breathes, and concentrates. She drags her fingers through her own mind like a sieve, looking and searching out the edges of her soul from Gideon’s. They must be here, surely.

Because Harrow can feel the strange overlap of Gideon’s knowledge of sword and body with her own experience with necromancy. She can _feel_ the discrepancy in the expectation of a sword in Harrow’s hand versus what Gideon’s soul-body _knows_ a sword should feel and move like in Gideon’s own knowledge. Harrow knows that the difference exists. Gideon did not disappear completely into her.

Gideon Nav is somewhere inside of her and is being a complete and utter _ass_ about not coming out.

One would think that Griddle would be pleased that she doesn’t have to ride along, silent and hapless, as Harrow’s private accessory.

And yet.

No Gideon.

-

“Are your accommodations to your liking?” the Necrolord asks in that calm, unnervingly gentle voice of his. Harrow still can’t look at him directly without wanting to weep.

Whether she wants to weep with rage at what she has lost in the name of service to him or because he’s overwhelmingly _god_ she isn’t sure. Both, but the ratio between the two is fluid and perpetually unclear. Much like ocean tides, going hither and yon.

“Yes, lord,” Harrow answers, keeping as much bite out of her voice as possible. Her head hurts. She’s feeling dizzy from blood loss — and she’d spilt all that blood for nothing because there is still _no Gideon Nav_.

He doesn’t say anything back, but she knows that he is looking at her and finding her answer and lack of truthfulness falling below par. Harrow may fear, respect, and find herself slightly brain-dead just looking at him, but that does not mean that she trusts him. Not with this.

Not with her cavalier. Not when it was his Lyctors, his edict, his trials that took her away.

It doesn’t matter if the way it happened was not as he intended, ultimately he meant to take Gideon away and Harrow would never have —

Harrow bites the inside of her cheek.

She might have. It would have stung and hurt and it would have been another dark burden for her to carry for the rest of her life, but she might have. If things had gone a shade differently. She might have.

“It will take you time to process what has happened to you,” he says, infinitely steady. Something about him makes Harrow think of black holes. Silent. Roaring. Infinite centers of gravity. Terrible and sublime. “Do not over exert yourself, do not push yourself into what you do not yet understand, Nonagesimus.”

“No, lord,” Harrow nods.

He sighs, and she thinks she is not imagining the smile in his voice when he continues, “Do not push yourself into something you _believe_ yourself to understand, either.”

Harrow’s fingers curl into her palms, hidden in her sleeves.

Harrow knows perfectly well what she’s gotten herself into and what she’s doing. It’s Gideon who’s being an absolute _blockhead_ about it.

-

“Griddle,” Harrow hunches over the table with her immaculately laid out skeleton, “I am not trying to undermine your idiotic heroism. Don’t be petulant just because your heroics and your supposed final last stand are not as final as they would have appeared to be. I think everyone would acknowledge that you’ve gone and finally been true to yourself and gotten yourself killed in the most spectacularly reckless way possible. So get in the damned bones.”

Nothing. Nothing at all for the past hour. Days. _Weeks_.

Harrow’s fists shake with the force with which she’s digging her nails into her palms.

She closes her eyes, headache pounding in her temples.

She reaches down into herself once more, searching Gideon out, running her fingers over the fine line that snags as _Gideon Nav_.

She digs her fingers into that crevice and attempts to rip it open. She can feel it resisting, wavering.

Harrow focuses on Gideon’s hair. She conjures to mind Gideon’s cocky smirk, with and without the paint that marks a member of the Ninth House. She traces the marblesque lines of Gideon’s arms as she takes up a sword, and the curl of her fingers and the press of her broad palm. Harrow breathes in deep and fills her ears with the sound of Griddle’s incessant chatter, even when she isn’t being talked to directly.

In her minds eye she traces her entire life back. An entire life filled with Gideon Nav — front and center, off to the side, in the background. A life with Gideon Nav, the walking dead who refused to die.

Gideon was called to die thrice, and died only on the third time.

Gideon Nav.

_Gideon Nav, Cavalier Primary of the Ninth House. Your adept calls you_.

-

A shuddering gasp of breath. It feels like her entire body has been thrown through fire and smothered in ash. Every breath is laborious, and her throat is simultaneously wet and dry. Her lips are cracked. Everything feels like it needs a few dozen washes and then an extra dozen goes in a sanitizer.

Sore is an understatement.

Her fingers twitch and she groans. She feels the groan more than she hears it, throat so dry that breath stings.

Something at her fingertips clatters and it takes forever to slowly turn her head — each slight moment a terrible jostling feeling as she looks down at whatever it is she’s touched.

It’s those damned stupid glasses.

She feels a defensive spark, faint hurt and a touch of amusement, but overall sullen. They aren’t stupid.

_Watch it, I like those glasses. I look hot in them._

_-_

Harrow’s eyes fly open as she gasps, knees weak as she stares out in front of herself, not quite seeing the skeleton on the table in front of her, and not quite seeing what the dust and the grime and —

There was no body. _There was no damned body_.

“_Gideon_?” Harrow’s eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of her head, she almost loses the fine thread that connects her to her cavalier. Is this relief? “_Where the hell are you_?”

Gideon’s entire mind is like a cacophony of bright screaming sound-color-tastes that slam against Harrow like several thousand pounds of stone on all sides, bludgeoning and pummeling her into almost losing her grasp on Gideon.

She can feel the burn of wounds all over Gideon’s torso, fractures in her bones, bruising in her muscles, the shuddering hot pain with every breath.

Gideon’s gaze slowly travels until the irons are in sight.

“You mean to tell me that all this time you’ve been right _there_?”

Gideon’s mind is a riot. Like a sputtering fire. Harrow can hear her snapping _“Where the fuck else would I be_?”

“No one could find you!” Harrow knows that Griddle can’t hear her, not exactly — it’s a miracle that they’ve even managed to form a connection from this far away. But Griddle has always had an uncanny knack for putting words in Harrow’s mouth, that while lacking in the quality of their diction have always managed to convey the same general idea or tone as what Harrow herself would use.

Gideon’s field of view slowly moves further and Harrow can now see that while Gideon is with the object of her demise, that object is no longer where Gideon’s assumed death had taken place.

The stone cliff must have crumbled in the aftermath, when Harrow was unconscious. Gideon fell. And as improbable as it would sound, _survived_.

Well. Of course. Gideon Nav can’t die. Of _course_.

Gideon Nav _would_ be so inept that she would fail at dying. Harrow’s heart curls tightly in her chest, and her eyes sting. You can’t kill Griddle. Not even Griddle can kill Griddle.

That would explain why Harrow has been unable to establish the same connection as she had back at Canaan House. It raises some worrying questions as to whether she is actually a Lyctor or not, but Harrow would rather have this than that.

Harrow feels the questions building up in Griddle’s mind, just as many and pressing as her own.

The most important question being — how does Grideon get back to her adept? To _Harrow_?

Harrow’s en route to…some sort of school. Or training ground for new Lyctors. Gideon’s somewhere in the shattered wreck of Canaan House. There’s leagues and leagues and leagues between them, now.

She doesn’t know how to get this ship to turn around. What does she say? Turn around, Gideon Nav is alive? Despite all odds, the Ninth House Cavalier Primary is alive and waiting for them — for her? Who would she even speak to?

How long would it take for them to get back? How long can Gideon last? No food, no shelter, no water, no access to medical equipment — she was _impaled_. She was buried under rubble. And before that she had blown out her arms and legs fighting a centuries old Lyctor possessing the body of a walking eternal thanergic generator.

Harrow clutches her chest, vision doubling as Gideon’s battered lungs wheeze. Griddle’s wet hacking sounds like a rapidly deflating balloon as she laughs. Harrow squeezes her own eyes shut as Gideon slowly rises to her feet, struggling to remain upright.

“What are you doing?” Harrow hopes that every portion of her dread goes through to the cavalier. Because, knowing Gideon, there’s only one thing she can be doing.

_“Well. If you can’t get to me, I guess I’ll have to figure out a way to get to you_.”

Harrow imagines that this comes along with much more colorful and coarse language, but she already has the idea of it.

“How? Griddle, you’re a mess of broken bone held together vaguely by skin that somehow hasn’t burst apart at the seams.”

A mental shrug.

“Be serious, Gideon.”

Whatever the mental equivalent of blowing a raspberry would be, Gideon does it.

Every step and movement Gideon takes sends spikes of sharp pain through Harrow and she has no idea how Gideon is being so _flippant_ about all of it. Harrow’s feeling it by extension, Gideon’s the one living it.

“Do you actually want to be dead?”

Gideon’s mind lets out a loud and empathetic _fuck no_.

And then, softer, more smug and pleased and confident, everything Gideon Nav right down to the stupid glasses —

_One flesh, one end, dumbass. Can’t do that if we’re on separate planets._

A faint memory flickers at the edges of Harrow and Gideon’s mind.

_If I could figure out a way off of the Ninth, where you were actively trying to stop me, I can figure a way off of this planet._

True.

Harrow closes her eyes, focusing on Gideon’s vision as she feels the connection between them waver and thin.

Don’t make me wait overly long, Griddle, Harrow thinks at her.

_Right, because you’ve never been known for your patience. Chill, boo, I won’t even give you time to miss me. Smell ya later._


End file.
